The Logic of 'Service': Conceptualising service as a discourse rather than an act

Concepts of providing, doing, participating in, delivering, developing, and using services, have been made problematic by the increasing bureaucratisation and regulation of nonprofit organisations. It is now further complicated by new versions of mutual obligation and the third way such as 'Big Society' in the United Kingdom, and 'Nudge' in the United States. This article draws on data collected in 1999 and compares it with some new data emerging from online blogs between 2000 and 2012. It is argued that instead of moving on from notions around service acts to the reality of service discourses, policy has remained bound by the notion that service is an act and not as the data suggests a discourse informed by notions like norms of reciprocity and expectations of unpaid provision of knowledge.